Thursday, May 16, 2013

Disneyland Day 1

Greetings friends and family,

The 4 Webbs arrived safely at the happiest place on Earth. We woke up early and arrived early because Kendra wanted to make the most of our hotel time. The Disneyland Hotel is extraordinary. I'm glad we paid the extra money to stay here and I'm glad we didn't pay the huge additional cost of staying at the Disneyland Grand Hotel. I convinced the reluctant twins to pose like Minnie and Mickey as we waited for check-in.

We wandered through the lobby and were greeted by Baloo (from the Jungle Book movie). Easton and Layla were awestruck by his size and friendliness.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the pool and riding the monorail water slide. The twins are both extra friendly even to complete strangers. After about 5 minutes of pool time they were making friends and teaching pool games.

but neither of them likes to be too far apart even with new friends around. They prefer to play together along with other new friends.

Layla taught an older girl how to dive. I'm not making this up either. The little girl said, "I can't dive" so Layla put a new thought in her head by saying, "yes, you can! Here's how you do it."

The water slide worked as a good preparation for the rides in the days to come. Their bravery and independence was kicked up a notch when they did this all by themselves. They are finally tall enough to ride the big kid rides.

Easton smiled the entire afternoon. Actually, he's been smiling the entire week. I ask him what is his favorite part of whatever ride or event we just finished. Every time he says emphatically, "Everything! All of it!".

The Disneyland store is about 15 times as big as the retail version at our mall. The wall of Mickey and Minnie ears provided good options for everybody to choose from.

I'm getting so far behind in my blogging, but the action is nonstop from wake-up to crash-n-burn when we end the night. This is easily the best vacation of my life and I know it is for Easton and Layla too. Kendra is having fun too, but we've been so frantically busy packing in as much fun as possible into each day that we haven't had much time to sit and reflect. The ride home should be interesting though. We'll have a chance to catch up and share perspectives.

Obviously I'm no Disneyland expert after only one week in the saddle, but I have some best practices and really valuable insight about what works well. All of these years of Kendra researching and planning is really paying off in abundance this week. We're in the right place at the right time so often that it's hard to describe the magic of these moments.

My next few posts are going to be a chronological nightmare because there is so much going on that there is no way I can get this all posted chronologically. I've taken about 300 pictures in 3 days. Sifting through will be part of the joy of reliving these moments. Please bear with me as we rock Disneyland and siphon every last bit of fun from our time together.